Fire McMaster

The internal battle
taking place in the Trump administration, pitting the “adults” – Secretary of
State Rex Tillerson, Secretary of Defense James Mattis, General John Kelly,
and National Security Advisor H. R. McMaster – against the “America First” nationalists,
led by Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller, has now spread to the media. At the
center of the controversy is McMaster, whose foreign policy views are in many
ways the exact opposite of Trump’s, and who – rumor has it – may be on the way
out. There are indications that, despite recent expressions of support for McMaster,
the President has clashed with him repeatedly: Eli Lake reports
that Trump “screamed” at his National Security Advisor for calling his South
Korean counterpart after Trump said Seoul would have to pay for the THAAD antimissile
defense system.

The Never Trump progressive-neocon alliance is taking up the cudgels on McMaster’s
behalf, while the Trump loyalists are calling for his ouster. So what are the
policy differences between the two factions?

The current issue is what to do about the
war in Afghanistan – the fifteen year-plus futile crusade that is now the
longest war in our history. Bannon wants out, the “adults” want to escalate
the war with more troops. Trump himself leans toward the Bannon view: he reportedly
rejected a plan prepared by the “adult” faction and sent them back to the drawing
board.

However, from a noninterventionist perspective, the battle lines are not all
that that clear. In an interview with an administration insider, the Daily
Callerreports:

“Everything the president wants to do, McMaster opposes. Trump wants to
get us out of Afghanistan – McMaster wants to go in. Trump wants to get us out
of Syria – McMaster wants to go in. Trump wants to deal with the China issue
– McMaster doesn’t. Trump wants to deal with the Islam issue – McMaster doesn’t.
You know, across the board, we want to get rid of the Iran deal – McMaster doesn’t.
It is incredible to watch it happening right in front of your face. Absolutely
stunning.”

So it’s a mixed bag – as is the Trump administration itself. On the one hand,
we have the “adults” – who reflect the conventional bipartisan internationalist
foreign policy Trump campaigned against – and on the other hand we have the
Trumpian nationalists, who are generally noninterventionist but have some unfortunate
idiosyncratic fixations, notably a desire for conflict with Iran.

Another issue is the persistence of Obama administration holdovers, who are
being retained by McMaster. The new National Security Advisor is busy purging
Trump loyalists and replacing them with his own people.

A related issue is the contention
by the Bannonites that the damaging leaks – e.g., the release of transcripts
of Trump’s discussions with foreign leaders – are coming from National Security
Council personnel.

The nationalists are particularly perturbed by a letter sent by McMaster to
former National Security Advisor Susan Rice giving
her access to top secret intelligence. Rice is suspected of spying on Trump
campaign officials by getting access to National Security Agency transcripts
and unmasking the identities of the people involved.

The McMaster-Bannon conflict is rooted in their biographies: McMaster is a
gung-ho militarist who wrote an entire book about how those feckless politicians
kept us from winning the Vietnam war. Dereliction of Duty is a long and
often tiresomely detailed account of how Lyndon Johnson and those bothersome
civilians let “politics” – i.e., the growing disaffection with the Vietnam war
by the American people – prevent the President from unleashing the full firepower
of the American military.

McMaster is also the Army’s point man in the ongoing
battle for more taxpayer dollars, arguing that the military must prepare
for a land war in … Europe. The target: Russia.
This puts him directly up against Trump himself, who campaigned on the basis
of a new policy of détente. The voters voted for peace with Russia – but the
national security bureaucracy and the military-industrial complex are unalterably
opposed.

McMaster is a committed Atlanticist: he was in charge of a
study ginning up the alleged Russian threat and identifying Russian actions
in Crimea and Georgia as “the
end of the post-cold war period” – meaning Cold War II is on.

Bannon, the architect of Trump’s victory, is the White House ideologue who
seems to understand that a great part of the President’s appeal is his reluctance
to involve the US in foreign wars. He is, in short, the administration’s resident
“America First” nationalist, whose focus is on achieving Trump’s domestic agenda
and who wants to avoid getting stuck in politically unpopular overseas quagmires.

Allowing for (often major) inconsistencies and personality-driven conflicts,
on one side of the barricades we have the internationalists, represented by
the Tillerson-Mattis-McMaster trio, and on the other side we have the anti-globalist
Bannon-Miller group. The War Party
has been quick to come to the aid of the former, with the New York Times
“reporting”
that “Russian-influenced” social media are after McMaster’s scalp, and the left-wing
anti-Trump brigade denouncing the campaign against McMaster as the work of “white
supremacists” – yes, really.

Reflecting – in part — their increasingly anti-interventionist orientation,
Trump’s base is out
to get McMaster: a full-fledged campaign to oust him has been launched in
the pro-Trump media, and the left is reflexively defending him. Here again we
see how the political spectrum is being turned on its head, with the right going
“isolationist” and what
passes for the left these days taking a neoconservative
turn.

Of course, it isn’t that cut-and-dried: McMaster has his
good points. However, if we paint the two opposing factions with a broad
brush, the anti-McMaster campaign is a healthy development, one that is driving
the Trumpified conservative movement farther down the “America First” road.
This is precisely why liberal internationalists and neoconservatives have rallied
to McMaster’s defense – and why conservative and libertarian anti-interventionists
should take up the battle-cry to #fireMcMaster.

With the Trump administration, there’s always the possibility that we could
get someone worse than McMaster – say, John Bolton. However, there are rumors
that Col. Douglas Macgregor, retired, with decidedly anti-interventionist views,
would be in the running if McMaster is ousted. Here he is in a recent appearance
on Tucker Carlson’s show:

NOTES IN THE MARGIN

You can check out my Twitter feed by going here. But please note that my tweets
are sometimes deliberately provocative, often made in jest, and largely consist
of me thinking out loud.

Author: Justin Raimondo

Justin Raimondo is the editorial director of Antiwar.com, and a senior fellow at the Randolph Bourne Institute. He is a contributing editor at The American Conservative, and writes a monthly column for Chronicles. He is the author of Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement [Center for Libertarian Studies, 1993; Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2000], and An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard [Prometheus Books, 2000].
View all posts by Justin Raimondo

The Trump Presidency is beginning to rather alarmingly resemble Guliver’ s Travails…. All tied down by feckless midgets

Luchorpan

Sounds like every other recent US presidency then.

Realist

Yes, US Presidents for about six decades, have not been in charge of foreign policy or defense/intelligence agencies. That is the purview of the Deep State.

Mark Thomason

Certainly not Obama (complaining of The Blob), nor Dubya run by Cheney, nor Bill Clinton wallowing in self indulgence. I think HW Bush was himself the Deep State.

Eileen Kuch

I hope you’re not including John F. Kennedy, as he did take charge of foreign policy (the intelligence agencies, not so much). Unfortunately, he was assassinated on 22 Nov. 1963, with both the Deep State and Israel behind it.

Realist

I am including Kennedy. He was shot in the head….so much for taking charge

John

Herbert McMaster is a member of the Rockefeller/CFR along with Bill Clinton, Dick Cheney and George Soros. See lists in the CFR annual report.

Realist

The Rockefeller/CFR is probably just one of many groups that feed//support the Deep State.

MvGuy

Again my comment vanishes….!?!?!?!?! Will it return soon just as it did the former time this happened…l???

Only time will tell………..!!!!!!

MvGuy

Why do my comments disappear soon after I post them….?????? They are in support of Trump and otherwise innocuous …… WTF…. ?????????????

JanD

Ask Disqus or your device. The (3) comments are or at least became visible here.

Luchorpan

Antiwar might be approving them. Relax. Almost every comment is eventually posted here.

It seems I got moderated early on when first posting here, but now my comments post immediately.

Sounds like an issue on your end. I don’t see any comments by you in the moderation queue, etc. They seem to have automatically published.

JanD

You might be located behind some caching-proxy, which will not update the list of comments that often. Might be even at ISP level.

jgmoebus

My question is: if Trump is such a great “Leader,” “Manager,” and “Boss” ~ who promised a foreign policy of “non-intervention” [whatever that is] ~ then why does he keep appointing and surrounding himself with Generals, Big Oilers, Wall Streeters, and All the other Usual Suspects from the military-industrial/petro-financial/techno-infotainment/arms-drug/surveillance-secrecy-security complex/network/matrix?.

The “Deep State” hasn’t trumped Trump and Trumpatismo. If It hadn’t wanted him at 1600, he wouldn’t be there, in the first place. And when he has accomplished what he was sent there to do, he will be replaced, in the second.

Luchorpan

Trump wasn’t elected on “non-intervention” but on “defeat ISIS, leave – and try to get along with Russia”. Also, he condemned Iraq/Libya wars and condemned aiding ISIS. And he didn’t see the sense in meddling in Ukraine.

He made a mix of good and bad statements during the election and primary. At one time, I believed Trump to be better on foreign policy than Rand Paul.

I agree that Trump has picked some bad people, but he also goes his own way, in defiance of his “advisors”. I don’t claim to understand it.

I assume Trump and his team are just new to politics. And he doesn’t know whom to trust. I wish he’d gone with the less flashy people who roughly agreed with his pertinent positions.

There are some major talents who really could have helped him. Philip Giraldi would be a good one.

–

Also, Trump’s idea of letting generals manage foreign policy has some merit. He has good, novel ideas, at least on paper. And he’s focusing on results, not pleased with current results. So, there’s hope that we see major improvement.

FDR is praised today for trying different things to “help” get the US out of the Great Depression. Among FDR’s ideas, he burnt food to raises prices. Isn’t that crazy? That’s just how politics is when someone’s trying something new.

JanD

Appointments have a lot to do with deals made with the various groups you need support from. When the power balance shifts again, expect different appointments and a lot of replacements. Then again, it might also cause complete isolation of a president, which is of course the battle plan from the opposition from the beginning. Bog him down, wait for new elections and keep the ship floating with technocrats at key positions, who will change nothing.

Luchorpan

Would complete isolation of the president be a bad thing? Trump could take stands, rally his supporters, pressure Trumplicans to get elected into the House in 2018.

On a number of issues, Trump has little support from either party. He’s already somewhat a third party.

The Trump Revolution is supposed to redefine the GOP. We need new people in Congress to do that.

And Trump could force Congress to take some powers back, such as the power to declare war and to regulate trade.

JanD

Trump’s election as some kind of D-Day, creating a beach head to start a longer campaign for “draining the whole swamp and nothing but the swamp”?

He has to survive the first year still when forces are gathering for fishing expeditions in Trump’s swampy closet and “locker rooms”. The truth could become the first casualty with those processes claiming to find it.

So far Trump does not show any coherent battle plan. He might not operate that way at all. And no record of such tendency exists.

dieter heymann

Answer to your question. Because Trump failed to develop a large cadre of his own sub-managers. He was and still is a lousy political leader/manager/boss without that cadre.

Luchorpan

The cadre exists. He just needs to hire some of the aging Paleos. Raimondo’s conservative and libertarian buddies would fit in a Trump admin.

Trump has the administration he has because he has the administration he picked — which means he has the administration he wants.

As a fairly standard issue rich, whiny, entitled northeastern progressive corporate welfare queen, he’d be unlikely to get any libertarians even if he wanted them.

AGPhillbin

This assumes that Trump actually knows what kind of administration he wants. I maintain that his only criteria for hiring is 1) does the prospective hire talk tough, & 2) can he help him defend himself against attacks from outside &/or within the administration. His decisions are all about him, not about policy.

John_Smith001

If he wanted Paleos he would have asked Buchanan. If he wanted Libertarians he would have asked Ron Paul.

Eileen Kuch

First of all, Dieter, Trump isn’t a politician, never was. He’s been a businessman all of his adult life and was the CEO of both Real Estate and Casino businesses for 40 years. It was this fact that drew so many people to vote for him.
The only good politician post-WWII was John F. Kennedy. He not only drew huge crowds across the US, he did so in every foreign country he visited. The reason he was able to draw such crowds had to do with his humility and charisma. Even the anti-American French populace loved him. Why? He brought his wife, Jackie, to Paris, and even joked about it. “I’m the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris.” And the crowd cheered wildly.
We must remember why the French had turned anti-American .. It was less than 20 years since Paris was “liberated” in the last year of WWII, and the worst behaved were the Yanks.

Trump is anyone his core base wants him to be. Any position that will buy him a few extra votes will be his position for that day. His base is too dumb to realize his contradictory positions also, so he gets away with it unfortunately.

Thomas Carlson

All of this internecine conflict reminds me of what Nazi Germany must have been like before the Night of the Long Knives. The Deep State is conflicted and the Trump administration is rife with dissention, bickering, and leeks. Will Trump, ever the narcissistic, incoherent wind bag, be able pull it together or will he be just an Ernst Röhm figure, put down in some ugly CIA purge and some evil neocon like Pence take his place? It promises to be an interesting year.

dieter heymann

Hitler was not removed by the Roehm putsch hence your analogy demands that Trump leads the CIA against the Secretary of Defense. Or some other general.

Thomas Carlson

It wasn’t a direct analogy, just as the neo-fascist corporatism in the USA isn’t a carbon copy of Nazi Germany. The internecine conflict in the current situation is real, though. It’s anyone’s guess how it will all shake out.

Luchorpan

I’d love to hear your ideas on what alternative there is to “neo-fascist corporatism”. I mean maybe via a link or an author or what have you.

Thomas Carlson

I don’t know that there is an alternative. The current system crept up on us when most folks weren’t paying attention. After 9/11 the Deep State forced through the Patriot Act and the neocons lied us into permanent illegal war on “terror”, when in fact we and Israel are the real terrorists in the Middle East. The Constitution is now just a piece of paper with some words on it.

Luchorpan

That’s an excellent article, ty. I would quibble over some things, or I’d argue that some areas can be misunderstood and that potential improvement can be limited (because man is fallen). But anyway, that’s a good article.

With regard to elites though, I believe elites do run every society. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, if they’re a virtuous and capable elite. Doctors focus on medicine; statesmen focus on politics. Division of labour isn’t inherently bad.

Your article gives me renewed hope that Trump truly has the potential to build a Left-Right coalition against this evil “Moderate” centre. Few Congressmen would be on board for that, but much of American would be. He just needs to change some positions to better reflect his base.

–

Btw, just to pester you on something unrelated that perhaps most here would know: Is it against the Constitution for the US to have foreign military bases? I was just trying to envision how the US Empire could be dismantled.

Thomas Carlson

Are foreign bases unconstitutional? Hmm… Certainly the 10 new bases in Syria are illegal, and that would make them unconstitutional, right?

Justin, why does the “war party” and the “left-wing anti-Trump brigade” support McMaster who wants to maintain the P5 + 1 nuclear agreement with Iran? The “war party” is certainly anti-Iran and wanting of a more bellicose Iranian policy.

antarcticus

I agree. McMaster’s support of the Iran Deal, and the evident necessity of Trump needing to defend McMaster’s “pro-Israel” bonafides is enough for me to question this Trump/Bannon vs. the Deep State (McMaster) storyline. Regardless of advisors, it is supposed to be the President who decides after hearing the arguments. Arguments are healthy. There is much going on behind the scenes in this administration. Roger Stone is vehement about removing McMaster – even associating him with “pedo-gate” in the minds of the manipulated and confused “alt-right” electorate. Is Cernovich a plant ? Is Stone a plant ? Is Bannon a plant ? All I know is that Bannon doesn’t belong there. He is not an expert and his “proud Zionist” affiliation is disturbing. I’ll leave you with a quote to chew on. Remember this the next time you are tempted to believe Bannon’s disinfo campaigns: “Larry Solov, Breitbart’s Jewish CEO, says “Breitbart’s origin story has its roots in Israel.”

Paranam Kid

There are 2 good points about McMaster:
1. he supports the nuclear agreement with Iran
2. he fired Ezra Cohen-Watnick, an enigmatic thirtyish intelligence aide who was vehemently opposed to the Iran deal. McM is hostile to Israel, describing it as an “illegitimate,” “occupying power.”

“General McMaster and I are working very well together,” Trump said. “He is a good man and very pro-Israel. I am grateful for the work he continues to do serving our country.”

google, “He is a good man and very pro-Israel.”

wootendw

The Trump comments you are quoting are just fluff intended for consumption by the (clueless) general public.

wbilct

From the Lake link:
“Trump credits McMaster with coming up with the plan to strike a Syrian air base last month”

That was surely a pro-Israel strike.

AGPhillbin

Disagree here. The Syria strike was a pro-Trump strike, not a pro-israel strike, even with the loud Israeli applause. It wasn’t done with a policy goal in mind, but with the object being to show that he wasn’t the Russian agent that he was accused of being. He figured bombing a Russian ally would buy him some breathing space; it bought him a week.

wbilct

Your splitting hairs!!!

A distinction without a difference is a type of logical fallacy where an author or speaker attempts to describe a distinction between two things where no discernible difference exists

This a typical hasbara technique

AGPhillbin

You’re an idiot, and you have a light switch for a brain. That accounts for your paranoia about “hasbara.” And, of course there is considerable difference between an action with a policy goal and one with a diversionary intent. He was trying to bomb his way out of an internal political fight, not help defeat Assad – and he didn’t. If that was his goal, why didn’t he continue the weapons shipments?

But of course, if I disagree with your analysis, I must be an Israeli agent, right? If you are typical of the anti-war crowd (I don’t think you are) , then God help the anti-war movement.

wbilct

“He was trying to bomb his way out of an internal political fight”

Do you realize what your writing. If that isn’t a war crime, it must be a high crime or misdemeanor, an impeachable offense

AGPhillbin

And do you realize what you’re assuming about what I wrote? Did I say that I thought Trump was acting honorably? Morally, it’s quite repugnant. Legally, I’m no lawyer, so I can’t say, but just keep in mind that no POTUS has ever been impeached for either an act of war or internal repression. Such proceedings are reserved for much graver crimes, such as covering up for a hotel room burglary or lying about a blow job.

wbilct

From the Eli Lake link:
“Trump credits McMaster with coming up with the plan to strike a Syrian air base last month”

That was surely a pro-Israel attack.

Paranam Kid

Sure, Trump is not going to say that the man he appointed is out of sync with him on Israel.

wbilct

It could be just a matter of degrees, we will know in the fullness of time

wbilct

Their differences may just a matter of degrees. We will know in the fullness of time

Eileen Kuch

Here’s the conundrum, Paranam Kid .. Why is McMaster so obsessed with accelerating the war in Afghanistan (which is unwinnable), invading Syria and antagonizing Russia? He’s no friend of world peace .. His predecessor, Michael Flynn, was (and still is) a friend of world peace; wanted US withdrawal from Afghanistan; non-intervention in Syria and cooperation with Russia on many fronts – especially with that nation’s fight against ISIS and other Jihadists, as well as de-escalating the war of words with North Korea over its nuclear program and missile tests. He must be fired for these reasons alone. The fact that he’s pro-Israel places him in the sinister category, since the Zionist Entity and its leaders are sinister themselves.
McMaster, contrary to your statement, IS strongly pro-Israel, and that’s why Trump says the two of them work well together. The mistake Trump made in appointing him as Nat. Security Adviser is that he (McMaster) is not only very pro-Israel, but he’s too much of a warmonger and anti-Russian.

Paranam Kid

I don’t know enough about the man, which is why I added the link to Mondoweiss, which usually presents a balanced view of things. Having said that, no one is beyond correction, so MW might be wrong.

As for Flynn, again, I don’t know enough about the man, and am not interested to find out since he is out of the game. But I do remember reading comments about him (no, not on MW) that left me with the distinct impression he was not for world peace.

In fact, with the MIC & neocons having been in charge now for a long time, I don’t think we’ll see a peace-loving general in a responsible position for a long time to come, if such a creature as a peace-loving general even exists, it sound slike a contradiction in terms.

wars r u.s.

Flynn was obsessed with Iran. Why she thinks he was some kind of peacenick is beyond me.

Paranam Kid

I remember now. In any case it does not matter anymore, but it is good to know for the record, so thanks.

bob balkas

So, the seemingly or real deep split ever since the civil war among Americans to go on till next election?

Luchorpan

I fear the split remains for the next 20 years, until some stupid new civil war erupts. Divide-and-conquer.

wootendw

“…unfortunate idiosyncratic fixations, notably a desire for conflict with Iran.”

Yes, that is Trump’s problem. As a New Yorker with Jewish business partners and a Jewish son-in-law, Trump is pro-Israel. But, he is also against ‘radical Islamic terrorism’ and has only recently learned that the Netanyahu regime has been supporting it against Syria’s Assad.

Luchorpan

He could have learned that from antiwar. There were suggestions such was the case anyway.

wootendw

The Netanyahu regime has openly admitted that it prefers ISIS to Assad. They surely told this to Trump. Just because Trump reads Infowars doesn’t mean he reads AW.

Eileen Kuch

However, the Netanyahu Regime doesn’t feel the same way toward Trump (Bibi Boo-Boo didn’t like Obama, either). It was the combined CIA/Mossad who created ISIS in 2009, in Obongo’s first year as POTUS. Part of the blame must fall on the ex-President’s shoulders, since he gave these terrorists full financial and arms support in his 8 years as President. The same with Netanyahu .. His regime’s not only supplied the Islamic extremists with funds and arms, but has also cared for the wounded terrorists in Israeli hospitals, then sent them back into the Syrian battlefields when they were healed.
Trump’s worst pick was his own son-in-law, Jared Kushner, as his chief adviser. It was he and his wife, Ivanka Trump, who pressured Daddy Trump into ordering the launch of Tomahawk missiles at the Sharyat Airbase in Syria. Kushner’s also been undermining his father-in-law’s agenda at every turn, especially, regarding Syria.

the Late Idi Armin

I don’t buy this narrative of Trump and Bannon fighting the generals. There is no fight. All Bannon did was tell the MIC and Wall street how to pitch a message to the RP base and Trump was the guy they picked to deliver that message since Bush, Rubio and all the others sucked ass in the opinion of that Base.
the only fight is over who gets the money within the MIC.

Luchorpan

Bannon wants higher taxes on the wealthy, at least according to one article.

If Trump follows through on trade and immigration, he’ll anger Wall Street. MIC loves him, but others want even more war, more spending.

the Late Idi Armin

Bannon’s done. you hear from him about as often as you hear from the CIA or the NSA chief.

wars r u.s.

Trump had to be talked into certifying that Iran was in compliance with the nuke deal. He also made it known that he doesn’t want to have to certify in 90 days and wants his people to make sure he doesn’t have to, even if Iran is in compliance again. He wants to get along with Russia but says they should give back Crimea. He says he wants to get out of Afghanistan because we “aren’t winning”. He stopped the CIA from further arming of the “moderates” in Syria but he didn’t stop the DOD from pouring more troops and equipment into that country. Not to mention his constant tweeting of belligerence toward North Korea and the continued onslaught in Yemen. But hey, thankfully, his foreign policy is “the exact opposite” of McMaster’s.

RickR35

Yeah, either fire him or get him in line with your agenda. It’s remarkable how these last decades people come into government with their own agenda that have nothing to do with the President’s or directly oppose it. A shame this most important task of either getting the right people or managing the people they picked is something Presidents are so poor at doing.

Anti-Empire

If you want to know what is motivating the anti-McMaster crowd in Trumpland, you have to read Breitbart News. The significant thing about Breitbart is that it is pro-Israel above and beyond all else. Now look at the attacks on McMaster there, and you will see that they are primarily motivated by McMaster’s support of the P5+1 agreement with Iran. That of course is a no-no for Israel and its amen corner here in the US. Trump understands this quite well and in his tweet supporting McMaster he specifically said that McMaster is quite pro-Israel. It is clear he said that because that is the driving force to get rid of McMaster in the Trump base. Breitbart even ran a long article quoting extensively from a Jerusalem columnist who stated that Trump should lose Israel’s support if he kept McMaster.
But I would suggest that this makes McMaster worth keeping – despite all his many other drawbacks. Why? Because as I have long maintained, an anti-Iran stance is a deal breaker for New Detente with Russia. Russia will not break its close ties with Iran – or Syria – pretty much the same thing. If that is the demand of the US, then kiss Detente good-bye. That will plunge us into the worst sort of confrontation and the threat of nuclear war.
On the other hand with Netanyahu swept up in a corruption scandal (and whose doing is that?), the strongest voice against Iran is being weakened in Israel according to an Israeli ex-pat friend of mine. If Netanyahu falls and McMaster stays, then the prospects for Detente improve.
Bannon is a mixed bag. He has some genuine insights into domestic politics but his pro-Israel bias and his desire to fight new Crusades to defend (and spread?) Judeo-Xtian culture are BIG negatives.
John V. Walsh

Paranam Kid

Good points, John/Anti-Empire.

MvGuy

Maybe Trump has the cabinet he NEEDS to survive… With the see eye ay, the Hillary holdovers and the deeply bribed state out to oust him, the generals seem the only somewhat safe choice… If Trump chose his dream team, they would be beautiful females…. He has done what he h do…..

“Dereliction of Duty is a long and often tiresomely detailed account of how Lyndon Johnson and those bothersome civilians let “politics” – i.e., the growing disaffection with the Vietnam war by the American people – prevent the President from unleashing the full firepower of the American military.”

I read it as about how the military failed to tell LBJ the truth as they saw it, and allowed a long half hearted blunder to go on and on to certain defeat.

McMaster wrote that they should have told LBJ the truth, what it would really take, and told him that not doing that would lead to defeat. Then LBJ could choose war or peace, but not the lame long draw out disaster they allowed instead.

I see what he is doing now as the same advice. It is a classic of political infighting, controlling the agenda. List three options, two of them really awful, and so get the third one. War is one of the awful ones. It has to be listed. McMaster did. That is not the same as choosing it as the best of the three.

Justin could be right, because so much going on now is behind the scenes. I just don’t see that as likely, because I have a higher opinion of McMaster and those agreeing with him for all these years.

eric

Justn you I are Anti war of course we want to fire McMaster he is pro war .Many generals are anti war . I think Eisenhower might have been .

eric

As a general rule i’am opposed to all nuclear deals with all Muslims because of their strong desire to commit suicide and get their 72 virgins

McMaster and Bannon are just two different flavors of warmonger. The more time they spend at each other’s throats the less time they have to kill brown people. I say good f**king riddance. Keep the battle burning. Swing away, little hooligans, Eurasia rises while you bloody each others noses.

Thomas Carlson

Bannon is the scariest dude on the Trump team. His infatuation with the Italian fascist, Julius Evola, whose adulation of the Nazi Third Reich led to Bannon’s seeing history as a titanic struggle between the West and Islam, Iran, and Russia. This “transformative, apocalyptic conflict” is one in which we are all pawns in a grand chess game. Sorry, Steve, Putin is a much better chess player than Trump. You’re playing on the losing side of this game.

I have a healthy belief that the McMaster faction is trying to destroy President Trump and his agenda from the inside. Just the idea that this fool gave Susan Rice a get-out-of-jail-free card, and allows her continued access to classified information, shows contempt for his own duty.

Except for trying to prevent a war with Iran, I haven’t seen anything good from him. Instead, all I see is bad. But I guess Iran is the ONLY country he’s unwilling to go to war against.

He’d rather go to war against Afghanistan, Russia, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, etc.

I would prefer he get taken out with the weekend trash, or maybe the clean-up after the new air conditioning system is installed at the White House. He is showing loyalty to the Obama regime instead of the current President. Has he no concept of “dereliction of duty”? Or “court-martial”?